


Devils, Black Sheep, Really Bad Eggs

by KChan88



Series: Sailing By Orion's Star: Deleted Scenes [5]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 10:57:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7681711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChan88/pseuds/KChan88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bahorel and Prouvaire make the move to Nassau, accidentally writing a new pirate song along the way, and reflecting on found family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devils, Black Sheep, Really Bad Eggs

**Nassau 1710.**

Jean Prouvaire looked thoughtful.

There was nothing strange about this. Prouvaire usually looked thoughtful, but the hazy melancholy clouding his new friend’s eyes concerned Bahorel. Although he supposed the melancholy wasn’t odd either; even in their short time together Bahorel noticed a sort of gleam in Prouvaire’s eyes, something like the prophets of old, as if he saw all the ills of the world, yet also saw all the hopes and the dreams and the varying outcomes. But something about the way it manifests now as he listens to the chatter of Bahorel’s mother and sisters from his place on the two steps leading into their small new house on Nassau, rented without trouble from one of the merchants in Nassau town, worries him.

“All right?” Bahorel asks, sitting down next to him, the old wood giving a creak.

Prouvaire nods, jumping a little at the sound of his voice, pushing a stand of lengthening reddish blond hair behind his ears, an unconvincing half-smile slipping onto his lips.

“Thank you very much for offering me space in your house,” Prouvaire says. “I know we’ll be at sea a good bit, but I’m glad to not have to find lodgings in Nassau on my own.”

“We’re friends are we not?” Bahorel asks, clasping Prouvaire’s shoulder. “And soon to be brothers in arms.”

“Yes,” Prouvaire says, the smile growing more genuine. “We are both of those things.”

Bahorel stays silent a moment, giving Prouvaire space to respond, speaking again when he doesn’t.

“I haven’t known you long,” Bahorel points out. “But I’m also afraid that while you are a bit mysterious, as is a poet’s right, your eyes give your discontent at the present moment away.”

“They’re always betraying me,” Prouvaire jokes. “Are you certain your mother and sisters don’t need help unpacking?”

“I’m certain they would have not sent me out here if they did,” Bahorel says. “I put things in the wrong place too often, apparently. But you’re evading. If you don’t want to talk that’s all right, I just want you to know you can.”

Prouvaire hesitates a moment, the laughter of the three women inside growing louder, set against the clatter of items being removed from moving crates.

“I only…” Prouvaire begins. “I feel a bit out of place, I suppose. I disagreed with so many things my father did, though we avoided argument because he simply didn’t know the truth about me. But he was the only family I had left, even if he didn’t know me.”

“Well I’m quite sure my mother is ready to adopt you, if you’re amenable,” Bahorel says. “She brought up you staying with us before I could even get the words out.”

Prouvaire brightens at this. “Really?”

“Really,” Bahorel echoes. “She’s difficult to please so be honored, I say.”

“What are you talking about our here, Eli?” the woman in question says. Adira pushes a stray black curl behind her ear, mischief in her eyes.

“That perhaps you might like Prouvaire as your son more than me,” Bahorel teases.

His mother swats at him, laughing, then pats the side of Prouvaire’s face.

“You are welcome to stay here with us as long as you like,” she says. “Perhaps you can make my son behave,” she continues, fond.

“Oh I am certain that’s not true,” Bahorel says. “Prouvaire here was hiding abolitionist pamphlets from his slave owning father and then ran to a pirate island.”

“Well perhaps then when you are inevitably in trouble you will have a companion along the way,” Adira says, laughing.

This seems to cheer Prouvaire up a bit, and he smiles wider as she goes back inside. Considering it for a second, Bahorel slips an arm around Prouvaire’s shoulders, and he accepts, sidling a bit closer.

“You and your family are so warm,” Prouvaire says. “It’s really lovely. My house was a bit…cold after my mother passed away, you see. And the people on the crew of the _Misericorde_ seemed warm too. I liked them almost immediately.”

“So did I,” Bahorel says. “I suppose I’m not a pirate officially yet, but they seemed like proper pirates, you know. Not just in it for themselves, but for principles. For a way of life. I admire that.”

“And you’ll teach me a bit more about sailing?” Prouvaire asks. “I’ve sailed before, but as a passenger, but I noticed things, read lots of books on the subject before deciding to come look for you.”

“Of course,” Bahorel says. “I will teach you anything you need to know, though I suspect you’ll be a quick study. Think you’ll take to the duties with cannons particularly well, small as you are, it’ll be easy for you to move around. And besides you already know your way around a sword, and managed to kick a man in the knee until he limped away. I’m certain those are both skills a pirate needs.”

Bahorel looks at his friend, feeling his smile reach his eyes. He wasn’t sure he believed in anything like fate, but the night he met Prouvaire by the sea, watching him spill his abolitionist pamphlets in the sand, seeing him kick the man who confronted him in the tavern, listening to him tell old sea legends with dreams lacing his words, he’d known it wouldn’t be the last time they saw each other. He’d known, somehow, that Prouvaire would matter to him. Somehow, that night, he already did.

“That’s the thing about you, Jean Prouvaire,” Bahorel says. “Nearly everything about you is unexpected. In the best way.”

Prouvaire tilts his head, that melancholy receding from his expression and replaced with joy; he’s much more enthusiastic now, a light rushing back into his face, eyes gleaming with sudden excitement.

“But to be a pirate!” he exclaims, leaping up from the stairs. “It’s like living in a book or an old folktale, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is,” Bahorel says, getting up as well, grinning wide and picking up his cutlass, which lays leaning up against the stairs. He unsheathes it, pointing it forward. “We shall take the sea by storm!” he shouts, brandishing the cutlass, much to Prouvaire’s amusement.

“And vanquish our enemies!” Prouvaire says dramatically, drawing out his own, newly purchased cutlass, and it clashes against Bahorel’s. “Stealing from them in the dead of night, and they’ll wonder if we were real, or if we were ghosts!”

“Sounds like an excellent play, really,” Bahorel says. “It would cause the aristocrats who saw it to faint in their seats, I think.”

“I know,” Prouvaire says, matter of fact. “I can only imagine what the society my father kept on Guadeloupe would think of that. Villains, they would call the pirates, I’m sure.”

“Black sheep!” Bahorel adds.

“Really bad eggs!” Prouvaire crows.

“Who’s a really bad egg?” a soft, unsure voice asks, and the surprise of it makes both of them drop their swords.

“Good lord man make a noise,” Bahorel says, eyes landing on Enjolras as he approaches them, papers in his hands. “Do you glide rather than walk?

“Not so far as I’m aware,” Enjolras says, a reserved half-smile on his face. “I just thought I’d bring the articles over for you to sign. You were talking about bad eggs?”

“Oh, Prouvaire and I were inadvertently composing a song about pirates,” Bahorel says, chuckling. “Or well, rather song someone who was not a pirate might write about pirates.”

“Well if you do come up with more I’m certain I’d like to hear it,” Enjolras replies, and serious though his tone is, Bahorel senses the sincerity. “Perhaps we could add it to our repertoire of working songs.”

“Excellent,” Prouvaire says, still looking a bit shy, but he smiles again as he takes the articles from Enjolras and both he and Bahorel read them over.

“If you’ve any problems with the articles you may raise the issue with Fantine the quartermaster and it will be voted on,” Enjolras says. “If enough of the crew agrees.”

“I like the way you lot think,” Bahorel says. “But all seems fine to me here. Prouvaire?”

“Quite,” Prouvaire says. “Thank you, Enjolras.”

“Well,” Enjolras says, as they sign their names, a brightness in his eyes, and again Bahorel feels that strange sense of fate, but a fate rooted in choices leading them the right way, rather than simply sweeping them away with the tide, and he thinks that soon, Prouvaire won’t be feeling as if he lacks any family at all. “Welcome aboard, gentlemen.”


End file.
